touch tank advice

B

Briney Dave

New member
I am very interested in setting up a touch tank in my classroom. I would like some advice if you have tank building experience.

I am thinking of a tank that is about 4 X 8 feet and be about 18" deep plus a sand bed.

I have visited the Marine Lab at BGSU several times. Their touch tank had to be retro fitted with extra braching because it began to bow shortly after construction.

So I really have several questions for those of you in the "know" design to avoid bowing and breaking.

wall thickness
joint contruction
sources of material
Ideas on cost of just the tank

I was planning of using a large rubermaid stock tank as a refu filter along with a good skimmer, carbon and phosphate reactors, maybe a poly screen type of prefiltering to remove large chunks of goodies.

If I can get built what is in my mind, I will end up with a very cool and highly effective teaching tool. plus a load of fun to monkey around with.

thanks in advice for your advice and time
Briney Dave
 
What kind of things do you want to house, mostly tropical specimens or cool/cold water animals? This will affect thickness to an extent.
 
Steven, I was thinking mostly tropical, trying to avoid so many cooling issues that many other creatures require.

I have thought about creatures for a while but do not have a definative list yet. In very broad terms I want some species of stars that will live in such a tank yet will tolerate being touched and handled.
I want to have horseshoe crabs (again I know they can tolerate being handled)

urchins for gamete labs

some large snail species for observational lab activites of watching feeding and being able to see the foot clearly in action.

I imagine a school of chromis in the tank for movement and to be able to observe some schooling behaviors; that would lock me into a tropical environment for sure

BGSU rolls out a pool blanket on their tank to control both heating and cooling. To be honest the blanket is pretty nasty looking at times so I would rather avoid that method if I could

What do you think?? in terms of both environmental choices and set ups

I will not even think about actually starting until I am sure of the needs of the creatures I need to keep.

I did not think about the wall thinkness as insolation but it clearly is. Thanks for pointing that out. I was only thinking of the weight of the water equating to a pretty large force and how to keep the tank together.

It is safe to say at this point I know my learning outcomes far better than the specifics of setting up stocking and using this tool. advice is needed for certain

Briney
 
Can I make a few other suggestions? Skip the horseshoe crab, too big and destructive. Instead, how about a seagrass biotope. Bangaii cardinalfish with Diadema urchins, shrimp/goby combination, carpet anemone (do not touch) with a pair of clownfish, serpent stars (excellent for touching), a few big hermit crabs, (depending on skill level) seahorses (captive raised), maybe a few hardy solitary corals like Fungia, Trachyphyllia, etc. Those should make for plenty of good teaching examples.
 
I'm sure he would love that but remember that he would want this to be an interactive tank...

As for the contruction i would just see if you can get 1" glass to contruct it and that away you shouldnt need any bracing
 
I think he is trying to come up with an economical method which would point me toward a plywood tank. It seems pretty basic if you went with 4'x 8' as the dimensions you would use a full sheet for the bottom and then if it was 16" high you could have the 4 sides cut out of another full sheet. If you go 18" high you would need another 4'x4' peice which usually cost almost as much as a 4' x 8' sheet. Most people use 3/4" plywood ($30/sheet) and then glue & screw it together (of course you would pre-drill the screw holes to protect from splitting)

A great source of info on DIY tanks is www.GARF.org .

I was surprised that a school would approve such a liability in today's litigious world. It is refreshing to see people not afraid to go against the trend of "better safe than sued" though. The touch pool at the Cleveland Zoo was really neat and all they had inside was a school of stingrays and 3 small sharks. I was amazed at how neither felt like I had always imagined they would.

The pool at the zoo was portable but maybe their method of construction would be better suited to your needs. They had a concrete floor, landscaping "retaining wall" blocks for a frame and then a heavy gauge pond liner draped over the frame. It seems like a no-nonsense way to do it. The blocks are interlocking and the floor is already there for you so it would just require the moving and stacking of the blocks instead of cutting, drilling, glue and screwing everything. The GARF method uses marine grade epoxy paint, which is very costly ($100/gal or more) and has toxic fumes until cured, to seal the plywood from moisture. I would think the concrete blocks with pond liner could be put together by you and your students easily without anyone losing any appendages.

I am not sure how they trim the barb on a ray to make it less dangerous but it would be great to have a couple of them in your pool if possible since they don't mind the interaction.

GARF.org says your tank would be 359 gallons and their DIY tank pages will give you a specific cut list and assembly instructions if you go with plywood.

If you are doing this over a weekend and need help just post here about it a few weeks in advance. I am sure there are many of the members who are experienced in the construction field and would be willing to watch you work... uhhhh i mean help you out. :D
 
Steven, Your suggestions would make an amazing tank to say the least. It really started wheels turning, but Kevin is right, I am aiming to create a tank that students can really get wet with. I want to be able to pick up critters and pass them around to see first hand what I am talking about.

I want to be able to do projects such as gamete labs using the sea urchins who are particularly easy to manipulate.

Kevin, I never considered using plywood although I have seen in photos the process. I was hoping though to create an acrylic tank that would be able to view in from the sides as well as above.

I think glass would be much more expensive and difficult to work with than the plastic: Right?? if I go acrylic and assume a tropical temperature How thick should the walls and floor be and how should I brace the tank.

Steven, If I were set on having horse shoes can I still have some of your shrimp/fish combos too or will the horseshoes wipe them out??
how about currents with seahorses how much would be too much for them .
 
I have a 4 x 4 tank and I used 1/2" on the bottom and 3/4" for the sides and 1/2" for the euro Brace you might want to bump it up to 3/4 bottom and euro and 1" sides for 4 x 8
 
I would not put any other sand dwellers in with a horseshoe crab.

The seahorses would not appreciate vigorous current, but neither would any of the other animals I suggested.

The Diadema can be handled carefully and could be used for reproductive studies, but pencil urchins would be easier to work with. Although, they are not really reef-safe as they have been known to eat a some corals.

The other option to consider is not to build one big tank but to compartmentalize this planned tank into say eight 2' by 2' squares. That way there would be no compatibility issues. You simply keep things separate.
 
Kevin, I went to the Garf page and they called for only 3/8 acrylic to be used with both a plywood and acrylic and a acrylic alone tank does that sound right to you??

I think most people were pointing me toward 3/4 or even 1 inch thick. My 240 is 1/2 inch sides and bottom and top. The top only has two large cut outs to access the tank and is otherwise solid

I want this tank to be mostly open and easy for the kids to get into

Briney
ps I can not get my computer to find my usb to down load my pics of your tank but they turned out pretty cool.
 
Dave, that doesn't sound undersized to me as most of the reason to go with thicker acrylic is to compensate for the bowing from the vertical height but, in your case there would only be about 14" tall acrylic viewing windows and I am pretty sure 3/8" would be fine. There isn't much flex being put on the vertical surface only spanning 14".

The club had a 300gal acrylic tank donated and it was auctioned off but the highest bid received was only $100. I wonder if it would meet your needs and could just be placed on a pc of plywood laid right on the floor instead of building a stand. It was taller than you have specified but it would save TONS of work for you.

Does anybody know the club's intentions for that 300g tank? It was a bit beat up but it wouldn't really be used for a showcase display tank in your classroom.

Also, I have seen several people use "kiddie pools" for sumps or propagation tanks in the basement. It may be something to consider. Another thing I have seen is guys painting the plywood tanks with Dryloc paint instead of the expensive epoxy paint. Have you thought about using a couple of stock tanks plumbed together? They are sold in varioous sizes and they already have bulkheads in the sides and you can easily use Uniseals so plumbing them together would be easy enough.
 
Weird, I had a post dissapear. Steven, I thought about dividing the tank too but was worried about creating too big of dead spaces even with some sort of slots cut into the dividers plus how much of a maintance concern would this create?? (not that I am lazy but how would I be able to clean etc. )

Another wall thickness concern is that kids will lean over the walls and may bump the tank so I am back to thinking at least 3/4 but Steven's issues with what creatures to select is the correct first step.

I really like Steven's idea with the shrimp and gobbies. I also thought about a jaw fish as well. I don't want any stinging guys so the clown and annenome are out unless they could be contained some way away from little hands but still able tobe seen

Kevin the stock tanks or pool would work fine if it were only me or not in a high school class where not everyone is on the same page as I am,

I am thinking that the stock thanks will be great for filter sumps and plan to use them on my reef tank when I move it

I am not planning right now on any corals I am not sure that I want the lighting costs, algae issues invovled.

I will be using a refu to keep up the water quality and a good skimmer

Plus then I can have some other stars that would have an hunger for corals in the tank along with brittles and serpent stars.

I do not have any seahorse experience so I would really have to do the homework before considering those critters.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8658096#post8658096 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Briney Dave
I don't want any stinging guys so the clown and annenome are out unless they could be contained some way away from little hands but still able tobe seen.....

I am not planning right now on any corals I am not sure that I want the lighting costs, algae issues invovled.
Click to expand...
If you aren't going to use lighting, the anemone is out as would be the seagrass. But, if you could spring for two 400 watt MH's with 6,500 K Iwasaki's in Lumenarc reflectors, you could use the lighting to your advantage. If you center the two lights, the anemone will more than likely orient itself under the lamps. That might be far enough away to keep it out of kids reach. Plus, the clownfish would likely come up and give little hands a gentle nip to keep them at bay.

My wife is a science teacher and I have given a lot of thought to things I could do in her class. There is a lot of breeding possibilities with the Bangaii's, clownfish, seahorses, and even shrimp gobies. Plus, there is the symbiotic relationships of shrimp and goby, clownfish and anemone, cardinalfish and urchin, and zooxanthellae and cnidarian. Nutrient cycling. The role of scavengers such as snails, hermits, seastars.
 
I share those thoughts. I want the touch tank to be just one part of many water based learning tools. Seeing baby Bangaii, watching the relationship between a pair of clowns and their host anemone, the shrimp and goby; those are the hooks that I can use to peak student interst in science

Actually working on the tanks and caring for the creatures builds life time values for the sea and for home aquarium keeping.

My steps right now are to secure funding through some grant work that I have started.

If anyone knows of a local supplyer of acyrlic sheets I need to contact them to determine estimatabed costs on tank construction.

Lighting remains a question to me, Steven's M/H idea is very good and would let me do so many great things but there is a down side. Lighting is expensive, if I try for too big of a project I may loose the whole deal. (not that any part of the deal is secure anyway) Grants come and go sometimes very quickly.

I will keep you all informed as to my progres and I would like to thank you all very much for sharing your insights and ideas into this project

Briney
 
Kevin, I had heard of them but simply forgot all about their site. I marked the location and will have to check them out again. At the end of the year all of my bookmarks get wiped out by the server so I had lost their link and did not remember to go look for it.

thanks a bunch for the site
David
 
Just thought I would let you know my sump is made with 1/2 and it is bowing a little bit it is 14" tall 40" x 40"
 
Tbohinc do you have corner and cross braces? The jump to 3/4 from 1/2 from the Lima supplier is about $200 per sheet. Obviously I want to do things right the first time but if I can save 600 bucks and still do the same job...

thanks for the information
Briney
 
I will be sure to give you a call from the ER trying to explain to the nurse what a Rabbit was doing in an aquarium and why we are here LOL

I came in the class one time to see a student with his finger dipping into a 55 with four mid sized red bellied pirahna
which were trying to corner the finger
needless to say the pirahna are long gone
 
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